Kirani Ayat | photo credit: @kiraniayat/Instagram
Kirani Ayat | photo credit: @kiraniayat/Instagram

Ghanaian musician, Kirani Ayat, has called out the Tourism Ministry for using excerpts of his Guda music video to support the #VisitGhana2022 agenda.

According to him, he is expecting to be paid royalties due him because he didn’t give the green light for his content to be used by the Government of Ghana.

Earlier, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo posted a video on his Twitter timeline, promoting the #VisitGhana2022 agenda to the world.

The enriched video showcased Ghana’s beautiful culture, landscape and tourist sites among other places of interest that will entice tourists to visit the country.

Shortly after the video made waves on Twitter, Kirani Ayat called out the government for using his work without permission.

Taking to Twitter to vent his spleen, he said:

The president of Ghana has used my video ‘GUDA’ in this ad to promote Ghana. I was actively reaching out to the Ministry of Tourism in 2018/19 to use this video to push tourism in the North and got NO reply, yet today it’s in an ad and no one reached out to me for permission.

Whoever worked on this video should’ve reached out to the rightful content owners before proceeding. I spent my all in making GUDA possible, I’m sure you were paid for this job, where is my cut ?

Meanwhile, the renowned video director who shot the ‘Guda’ music video, David Nicol-sey has also reacted to Kirani’s post, adding that, the video director also used excerpts of singer Fuse ODG’s African Girl music video.

David Nicol-sey asked the Tourism Ministry to reach out to content owners for authorisation before using their works.

He wrote: Creatives struggle to create content with their last dime with zero support from @NAkufoAddo and @MOTACGhana. Did your team reach out to the content owners for authorisation before using @KiraniAYAT’s GUDA and @FuseODG’s African girl in promoting your ‘Visit Ghana’ campaign?

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